Tunic is a mess. It's an extreme puzzle soulslike zelda 1 mix that uses an antiquated gimmick, an in-game manual, as the main progression mechanic.

Tunic is too hard of a puzzle game if you want to play a soulslike, and too hard of a soulslike if you want to play a puzzle game. The Zelda comparison is fair, but only if you're talking about The Legends of Zelda, first of its name. I spent hours being lost not having a single clue where to go only to find out that I was simply walking past a door or a turn I was supposed to take.

The puzzle design in Tunic is frustrating, because the entire game is based on purposfully obscuring or not giving crucial information to the player. If you were to beat the game legitemately, you'd have to go through a lot of trial and error, not only on the soulslike part, but also on the puzzles. The game has 0 feedback for most puzzles you do, only vaguely indicating what you're supposed to be doing in the manual. The true ending, without a guide, is IMPOSSIBLE. There is no way someone can possibly find everything needed for the true ending without spending endless hours looking through every nook and crany of the map. Some people are into that, and it's their type of game, but I'm definitely not.

There's a crucial difference between Tunic and games like Outer Wilds. Outer Wilds guides the player via a command board that recaps not only what you already know in clear english, but also indicates connections between things you know in case you've missed them, while also guiding the player where to go explore next. You can look at the board, and figure out a destination. Tunic doesn't tell you where to go, only giving you slight hints, in a cryptic language in the manual. At some point, this becomes very discouraging, and I personally just used a guide. I'm very happy that I did so, because I would not be able to figure out what I'm supposed to do without a guide. To add insult to injury, after getting everything required for the true ending, the game bugged out and gave me the regular ending.

The soulslike elements of the game are lackluster as well. There is no variety of weapons, equips or items. There are a few useful items, and a few spells, and one sword. The equips you get are either gimmicky, either completely useless, either so good that you'll only be using a few given equips the entire game. Without the damage up defence down equip, I wouldn't have beaten the game in the time I did. The equips don't have a description, to fit the gimmick of the game, and are only vaguely described in the manual. This is a very bad thing, as most of the time you're unsure whether an equipment is even working properly. The bosses are all uninspired, the only boss I found enjoyable was the final boss. There are 0 humanoid fights, meaning that most of the time you'll be running around dodge rolling until the boss eventually lets you attack it. Only on the final boss do you get the chance to weave in attacks and dash out mid-combo when needed.

Overall, the game is just frustrating. It feels like it wasn't playtested enough, and has rough difficulty spikes and confusing puzzles all over. It felt more like I was fighting against the game the entire time, rather than playing it.

A lot of very cute tricks and brain teasers assembled around a novel gimmick, but the game itself is middling and the interplay between those two halves is not very well-constructed much of the time.

At some point after you hit the big "ah ha" moments (which, it must be said, are quite good - especially if you figure them out before the manual just force-feeds them to you), you realize that the secrets mop-up you've been looking forward to after you've gotten all the items and the knowledge necessary to really do it is going to be a nightmare because of the asinine worldmap and the fact that, for a game that has an in-game instruction book that comes with pre-written notes on it, you actually need to be taking a SHITLOAD of notes SEPARATELY yourself to even begin to remember all the stuff you need to go back to or even where shortcuts are. I love a good Figure-It-Out-'Em-Up and especially one that wants me to write things down, but I didn't realize that to be successful with this one, I essentially needed to be drawing another set of maps on top of the ones the game gives you as like, it's whole thing, and by the time I realized it, it was a bit too late.

But anyway, some fairly big points for effort. Especially the language - although I am conflicted with how that whole thing is integrated, too.

I'll be using this log not only to talk about Endwalker but to share my thoughts on Final Fantasy XIV as a whole. There's a small part of me that feels "unqualified" to even attempt a review for a game so massive in scale, one that I've no doubt seen only a small fraction of its content, but within that conundrum lies one of Final Fantasy XIV's greatest strengths. XIV value's everyone's experience with the game, whether someone bum-rushed through the main story as quickly as possible and never stopped to smell the flowers, whether they wholly dedicated themselves to the completion of every side objective, and everything in between. It's a wholly unique and personally tailored experience that's willing to give back as much as you're willing to put in. Personally, I found a great deal of enjoyment out of taking time out to go a bit off the beaten path to explore the sights, talk to the locals, and take on side quest chains to gain that extra little tidbit of insight into the world of Eorzea. XIV is very dedicated in making a good chunk of its side content contribute to its world in one way or another, and while it's certainly not perfect in this regard, it does a good job of color-coding particularly important content.

Jobs are the big gateway into the game's seemingly endless customizability, so it's a good thing that (at least for the one's that I've tried, personally) they're all pretty fun! I mainly played Summoner and Reaper during my run of the MSQ and they both felt very rewarding, even moreso when you level up and unlock that brand new ability you've been eyeing for a while and it adds a whole new layer of complexity to the moment-to-moment gameplay. My only issue with the job system is in having your level synced back down after you've gotten a taste of what higher level gameplay has to offer. There's no worse feeling than blitzing and blazing through all your opposition with a flurry of combos and spells only to get locked out of 90% of your abilities when going back to low-level content, but sadly it seems like a necessary evil for balancing purposes which is quite understandable.

Speaking on the moment-to-moment gameplay, it's really great. From the first time I unlocked the game's very first dungeon Sastasha at Level 15 I knew I was going to hooked and I was absolutely right. Every expansion just improves on the dungeons in every way, from the fights and gimmicks within to the visual design and story relevance. Dungeons are a really great way for the game devs to get experimental with backdrops and environmental storytelling and it absolutely shows. Some of the best sequences in the game come from the designers flexing their creative muscles with these mesmerizing set pieces, particularly in Shadowbringers and Endwalker. Trials are similarly enjoyable if maybe not even moreso at times. It's really satisfying to drop in and slowly learn the mechanics of the boss with a team of allies and eventually overcome these larger-than-life threats. Occasionally I found certain boss mechanics/gimmicks a bit too obfuscated in nature, especially on initial runs. My rule of thumb is that when you die, you should absolutely know exactly what it was that killed you and how so that steps can be taken to improve in the future. This is why I found more enjoyment from the boss fights that felt more reactionary as opposed to the ones that leaned towards memorization from repeated attempts because a gimmick was hard to visually discern with everything happening on the screen, but I digress. An overwhelming majority of XIV's trials were phenomenal so it's not a big deal. Raids are, no surprise, also very fun! I prefer the normal raids to the alliance raids, if only because they can be done in shorter bursts and are usually very concentrated bursts of excitement, but alliance raids are also fun for the chaos factor of seeing 23 other adventurers alongside you.

Story and characters, there's not much new to say here because the fanbase have loudly drilled their greatness into the psyches of the entire human populace (And for good reason, as it turns out). The story was the highlight of the game for me, even if it does start out on the slower side. A Realm Reborn takes its time, maybe a bit too much of it, drilling important concepts and world-building beats into you so that the other expansions can pay off favorably, and they absolutely do. Heavensward and Stormblood continue building off of ARR's foundation in interesting ways but don't neglect to tell their own interesting and self-contained stories within the overarching narrative. Shadowbringers and Endwalker take everything to an entirely new level through the introduction of high-concept, world re-defining revelations and some of the story's best and most important characters. The main cast of FFXIV, the Scions, are also all wonderfully fleshed out in these two expansions and by the end of the saga I became incredibly attached to each and every one of them and their own personal journeys. My favorites were Emet-Selch (one of my favorite antagonists in any medium, G'raha Tia, and Venat, but it's hard to be picky with such a fantastic cast overall.

I don't want to make this too long, even if there's plenty more I could say about the game (I commend anyone who cared enough to read this far). XIV is phenomenal, and I'm excited to continue with Patch 6.1 later today and whatever else they have planned for us in the future. The journey is absolutely worth the trek. That, I can't deny.